Heart to Heart

                         Cow hugs, ‘Valentines’ and Adam & Eve   My Aatma-Nirbhar-Bharat celebrating Azadi-Ka-Amrit-Mahotsav barely missed pulling off another milestone on its fast and furious march to becoming Vishvaguru in the league of nations. We were headed for a fantabulous Valentine’s Day this 14 th , by celebrating it as the Cow Hug Day. For me, with no dearth of these divine bovines wandering around and some squatting on the roads and highways chewing cud, I was busy deciding how to take my pick; and mulling with what phrase to substitute “Will you be my Valentine” message for my chosen ‘Valentines’ … err … dear bovines, when I hug them. But no.   A sudden, silly afterthought in the corridors of power to withdraw the novel idea made my ambitious plans go kaput, depriving me of this godsend to purify my sin-stained soul and earn some virtue-points for my inevitable future appearance in the court of Almighty God. Left to philosophise on the whiffs of free romantic air th

  Joshimath sounds alarm bells   When ecology is shortchanged for so-called ‘development’, Joshimath like disasters come rushing in to wreak havoc. If it is Joshimath today, and Kedarnath, Varunavat and Rishiganga sometime in the past that have rained misery on Uttarakhand, our hill state has reasons to worry. Shimla already sits on the simmering volcano of nature’s fury ready to erupt any time.   Pictures of the ugly monstrosity that this once-upon-a-time ‘queen of hills’ has become, send shudders down the spine. In them one hears silent but desperate alarm calls of nature growing weary with the uncouth load, and impatient to retaliate. Doesn’t the bizarre maze of buildings on steep hills seen vying with each other for space and sky, reflect an insane, crazy picture of modern living? How the successive governments have let this brazen rape of hills and valleys go on and on? How illegal constructions and encroachments have been sanctioned, laws bypassed and new acts framed to reg